Nathaniel's Umbrella
by MiraculousKitten
Summary: A ChloNath story that begins with the famous umbrella scene except with different characters and ends with Chloe and Nath dating, and quite a bit of fluff in the middle. Oneshot. I do not own Miraculous Ladybug.


Rain. Why did it always rain on Thursdays? Chloe scowled at the tiny droplets falling from the sky and prepared herself to run through the downpour to where her car was waiting. "Ugh, this rain is going to ruin my hair!" she grumbled, covering her blonde locks with her arms.

A flash of red walked past her. Nathaniel. That idiot that was always drawing in class. He held an umbrella, and Chloe wished she'd thought to bring one herself. Hadn't Jean-what's-his-face told her that it was going to rain? Maybe, but she wasn't going to throw a tantrum and give him the satisfaction of being right. Next time, she would wear a huge hat like her mother always did.

"Need this?" She looked up. Nathaniel stood in front of her, holding out his umbrella to her. She raised her eyebrows. Why was _he_ being nice to her? All she'd ever been to him was cruel. Whatever. She wasn't going to refuse an umbrella on a day like this.

She reached out to take it from him, and as their hands brushed against each other, a clap of thunder almost made Chloe squeak. She hoped Nathaniel couldn't hear her heart pounding. Why did she feel so awkward all of a sudden?

They'd been staring at each other for too long. Chloe started to thank him, but was stopped when the umbrella closed in on her. She heard laughter. He was laughing at her! But when she peeked out of the black folds of the umbrella, she saw that his eyes weren't mocking. They were, in fact, rather loving. Chloe found herself laughing with him. "Thanks," she said.

"No problem. See you tomorrow." He started down the steps, then turned and waved. She waved back.

"See you t-tomo-tomorrow!" Whoa. Why was she stammering? It's not like she was in love with him or something. She stared at him walking down the steps with a soft smile. Maybe, just maybe, she was.

Normally, Nathaniel wasn't late to class. In fact, he made it a point not to be, as he was sent to the principal's often enough for not paying attention in Science. But on a particular Friday when he came into class, all eyes were on him, looking as if he'd just murdered someone, as people do when you come into class late. He looked around. Even Marinette, who was universally known for being late, was already in her seat. He looked down, waiting for his punishment, but Miss Bustier just sighed and said, "Nathaniel, next time you're late, try not to pull focus. Go to your seat and turn to page 134."

He did, stealing a glance at Chloe on the way, and his eyes widened. Her hair, instead of pulled up in its usual high ponytail, hung loose around her shoulders. It was wavy, almost curly, and framed her face, which had noticeably less makeup than normal.

She raised an eyebrow, and Nathaniel realized he was staring. "Sorry," he mumbled as he hurried to his desk. He didn't see her tiny smile, or her slight blush, but they were there nonetheless.

He pulled a few books out of his backpack and opened his sketchbook. He knew it had gotten wet the day before, since he'd given his umbrella to Chloe, for reasons he couldn't exactly explain, but he wasn't sure exactly how much damage had been done. Apparently, a lot. He held back a gasp when he saw his ruined drawings; hours of hard work gone to waste. This was one of his nicer notebooks, too, and now he'd never be able to use it.

"Nathaniel, are you paying attention?" Miss Bustier said loudly. He looked up, realized the whole class was staring at him, and nodded sheepishly. "What did I just say?"

"Uh…"

"In English there are no past-tense conjugations, for example there is only I ran, you ran, they ran, etc, except for the exceptions of course." Chloe's voice rang in Nathaniel's ears like music. When had he last heard anything come out of her mouth that wasn't insults? Yesterday, actually, but that was beside the point. He nodded again.

Miss Bustier smiled. "Thank you, Chloe. And Nathaniel, please make sure you're paying attention."

Mostly, Nathaniel lived under the radar. He liked it that way. But his dismay over his ruined sketchbook had not gone unnoticed. Chloe spent the weekend scouring every art store in Paris, looking for the perfect notebook. It was kind of her fault that his notebooks were ruined, and, for some reason, she wanted to make it up to him. Anonymously.

"Have you taken an interest in drawing?" Jean-Luke asked her. She swallowed. She couldn't have him thinking that she was suddenly being nice to people, and she certainly didn't want his big mouth to blabber to everyone that she might have a crush on a nerd.

"Uh… yeah."

Jean-Pascal didn't seem to buy it, but he said nothing, not wanting to upset the Parisian princess. He started to follow her inside the next shop, but she waved him away. "I can handle myself! I don't need you to follow me around everywhere like a little weakling. Ridiculous! Utterly Ridiculous!" She scowled and flounced into the store.

However, once inside, she was completely lost. Endless art supplies were everywhere, and the room looked more like an artist's basement than an actual store. No one there seemed to care. This was no place for a girl like her.

She walked through the aisles, questioning everything she saw. What the hell was the difference between an 5B pencil and a 8B pencil? And why did you have to buy different paper for watercolor than for acrylics?

"Lost?" came a voice. Chloe turned around. A girl with so many earrings it looked like her ear might fall off and a bleach job that made Chloe want to vomit stood in front of her. Chloe realized that not only did she feel out of place, she also looked out of place, with her designer jacket and a purse that could pay for her college tuition.

"Yeah, very. I was looking for sketchbooks?" The crazy-haired girl walked away, and Chloe was offended for a moment before she realized she was supposed to follow. She decided against telling the girl that she'd heard her muttering about rich people and art. _Let the poor girl think what she wants to think,_ Chloe thought. She picked out two notebooks; one large on and one small one that was almost triple the price of the former. The blonde didn't want to disappoint Nathaniel, even though he hardly expected anything from _her_ , and he would never have to know it was her anyway. Right?

Chloe left the store with two things: a paper bag of notebooks, and a newfound appreciation for artists. Before, she'd only thought Nathaniel's ridiculous amount of notebooks was, well, ridiculous, but in the short time she'd spent surrounded by art supplies, she was more amazed by him than she even thought she'd be. In fact, she hadn't planned to be amazed by him at all.

Boy did that change.

When your desk is in the back of the classroom, not much activity goes on in your average school day. This was why Nathaniel was shocked when the first thing he saw when he walked into class on Monday was a paper bag on his desk. "Well go on, open it, Nathaniel!" exclaimed Marinette. Was it from her? No, she looked way too curious, and she wasn't exactly a world-class actor. How on earth was Adrien so oblivious?

He walked quickly to his desk, fully aware that all eyes were on him and wanting to get them off as soon as humanly possible. All they wanted to see was the gift, so as soon as he opened it, their attention would be elsewhere. He reached his hand inside and pulled out...textbooks? What kind of a gift was that? No, they weren't textbooks, they were sketchbooks, and expensive ones at that. Who on earth…"

Unfortunately, there wasn't time to figure it out. Miss Bustier walked in just as he was scanning the class for possible subjects, putting his interrogation to an end before it had even began. Darn.

His eyes brushed over the other students, hoping for some clue as to who could have done it. However, there was one girl his eyes didn't catch, since it was such an impossible idea that _she_ , of all people, would give him a gift. Who, you ask? Chloe.

"Hey, tomato-head. Just getting rid of this piece of garbage you gave me last week. Come to think of it, why didn't I just throw it in the trash instead of risking ruining my hair to give it back to you? Whatever." To mean-sounding.

"Hi Nathaniel! I just wanted to give back the umbrella you gave me last week! Crazy that it always rains on Thursday, huh?" Too perky. Chloe shook her head at herself as she walked down the hall to the park where she knew Nathaniel always went after school. Not that she was stalking him. No way.

"Hi Nathaniel-"

"Oh, hi Chloe." Huh? She looked up, and, to her dismay, found her tomato-haired boy standing right in front of her. Wait. _Her_ tomato-haired boy? _Quit it, Chloe!_ she told herself.

"Chloe?" Oops. She'd forgotten that Nathaniel was standing right in front of her.

She suddenly remembered why she was here, and wanted to get out of there as fast as possible. She did not like him, she did not! "Sorry. I just wanted to give this umbrella back to you, 'cause, um, it's yours, so...here!" She shoved the umbrella in his face and ran away. God, she sounded like Marinette! What was wrong with her?

Nathaniel spent the rest of the week trying to figure out who gave him the notebooks. The students heard him talk more in the four days he spent interrogating them than in the entire time they had known him, which was quite a record. He questioned even the least likely people, but none of them seemed to have done it. He was, of course, saving Chloe for last, because for some reason he hoped it was her, though how would she even know that his previous sketchbooks had been ruined? The answer was simple. She wouldn't. But he questioned her anyway, at the end of the day on Thursday, in the same place he'd given her the umbrella.

Chloe made sure he knew she didn't approve. "Why do we need to do this anyway? We all know it wasn't me." Nathaniel wanted to believe her, but he had to question everyone, and this blonde princess was part of everyone.

"Prove it."

"Huh?"

"Prove that you didn't do it. Should be simple, right? Because you didn't do it." He was cornering her, and he knew it. Her eyes flicked around the room, everywhere but his eyes. She swallowed nervously.

"Uh…" Nathaniel waited for her alibi. It didn't come. She clearly hadn't zoned out, so why wasn't she saying anything. "Well, um… It was me. I knew your notebooks were ruined because of me, because, y'know, you gave me your umbrella and got soaked, so I had to make it up to you, but I didn't really want you to know it was me, so…" She paused, and Nathaniel felt a drop of rain fall onto his nose. He wiped it off with his sleeve.

"Rain, again. You were right. It does always rain on Thursdays." Chloe nodded slightly to let him know she'd heard, but her eyes remained on the road, where, presumably, her driver was supposed to pick her up. "I can take you home," Nathaniel heard himself say.

What? He cursed himself silently, waiting for her mocking answer, but she just shrugged and said, "Sure."

So that was how Nathaniel found his arm linked around Chloe's holding an umbrella over their heads, taking her home.

He also found himself taking her to his house instead of hers. Neither of them realized this until they were in his bedroom. "Ahh, sorry," he mumbled. "Muscle memory, you know? I can take you back to your hotel…"

But Chloe wasn't listening. She was staring at his walls, which were covered in drawings, some on loose sheets of paper, and some which had clearly been ripped out of a notebook. Her eyes fell on one of herself, though she barely recognized it, not because she was dressed differently- in fact she looked exactly the same, except for her face. Instead of her usual pinched nose and turned-down mouth, she was smiling, laughing.

Nathaniel walked to her quickly, ready to defend himself against questions such as, "What makes you think you can draw me?" or, "Who gave you the right to hang a drawing of me on your wall?" but upon closer inspection, he saw that she was in tears.

"You drew me," she whispered.

Nathaniel didn't know what to say to this. He hadn't exactly had much experience in comforting crying girls, much less crying blonde divas. "Do you like it?" She nodded, turning and hugging him. She wasn't strong, but he almost fell over from shock.

A moment later, Chloe seemed to realize that she was crying into the shoulder of her quiet, artist classmate who she was 99% sure she was now in love with. She jumped back, embarrassed.

"Do you want to watch a movie?" His level of chill impressed her, but she wasn't about to tell him that. She sniffled and pretended that what just happened hadn't just happened.

"Sure, what do you have?"

Nathaniel scanned his bookshelf, which had mostly comic books and sketchbooks, but there was a small section of movies. "Uh, Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Guardians of the Galaxy, Infinity War, Spider-Ma-"

"Anything not the Avengers?" Chloe said, in her usual annoyed tone.

"Uh… Finding Nemo?"

The blonde sighed. "Finding Nemo it is."

So that is how, ten minutes later, Chloe found herself curled up against Nathaniel watching a clown fish touch 'the butt.' She'd told her father she was at Sabrina's house, and it wasn't hard to bribe the four-eyed idiot to lie for her. All she had to do was promise to lend her a skirt. Chloe never wore the skirt anyway, she might as well just give it to her. She'd deal with that later. For now, she was on a kinda-sorta-maybe date with her crush.

And she was getting awfully sleepy. She found it harder and harder to keep her eyes open, and eventually gave in. In her half-asleep daze, she didn't realize she'd laid her head on Nathaniel's chest until she'd already done it, but there was nothing she could do. He stiffened, then relaxed and slipped his arm around her waist. She hid a blush.

Nathaniel woke up on a sofa. His sofa. With something leaning against him. Chloe. And God, Chloe asleep was going to be the death of him.

Sometime when you fall asleep, you forget where you are. This is what happened to Chloe, who almost screamed before she remembered the events of the night before, and almost screamed again when she realized this meant that she had slept over at _Nathaniel's_ house. She got up cautiously and looked around.

The door to the bathroom opened and Nathaniel walked out. Though not just any Nathaniel. Nathaniel without a shirt. Chloe sucked in a breath. God he was hot! How on earth could a sixteen-year-old artist have abs like _that_?

"Morning," he said, running a hand through his wet hair.

"Uh, hi! I mean, good morning! I mean, um, whatever." She was starting to understand Marinette's crazy stuttering. She made a mental note to stop teasing her about her crush on Adrien. After all, Chloe had someone better to chase.

She suddenly remembered how bad she always looked in the morning, and rushed to the bathroom, looking in the mirror at her tangled hair and disheveled clothing. "Ugh, I look awful," she groaned. Nathaniel- who was still shirtless, and while Chloe wasn't complaining, at was making her flustered, and it was embarrassing- came up behind her and they met eyes in the mirror.

"I think you look beautiful."

Chloe blinked. Had he really just said that? She tried to hide her growing blush, but things like that are kind of impossible to do when your crush is both in front of you and behind you, so she just stood there, embarrassed but not knowing quite what to do.

Her phone beeped, shaking her out of her trance. "We're going to be late, come on!" she said, grabbing Nathaniel's wrist and dragging him out the door, stopping only to grab her purse.

"Chloe," Nathaniel said. She ignored him and continued out the back door of his family's flat. "Chloe," he said again. She stopped, giving him a questioning look and then realizing that he still wasn't wearing a shirt.

"Ahhh! sorry," she exclaimed turning around and dragging him back to his bedroom. Ignoring his half-hearted protests, she opened his closet and looked through the clothing, eventually tossing him a gray t-shirt with the instructions, "Put it on, and hurry, we don't have all day."

Thirty seconds later, they were in the back room of the shop that Nathaniel's flat was above. Chloe was surprised to discover that he owned a motorcycle, as he didn't seem like the type of guy that would drive one, but there they were, racing along the streets of Paris in his bright red motorcycle, with him in the front driving and her behind him, clinging for life to his waist. This would ruin her hair, but at that point, she didn't care. It was already dead anyway from lack of a hairbrush at his house.

They arrived in front of the school just as the doors were closing, and jumped out of the motorcycle. Nathaniel was fast, but when one is wearing ankle boots with two-inch wedges, they are not, so he just scooped Chloe up in his arms and ran, making it inside the doors just in time. Since their classroom was also on the second floor of the building, Nathaniel didn't put her down, but instead just ran up the stairs and burst into the room.

Again, the whole class stared. Chloe blushed, and Nathaniel immediately dropped her. But the damage had been done. Everyone burst out in conversation, and the two could just barely make out snippets of "is Chloe blushing?!" and "oh my God he's carrying Chloe!"

Chloe ignored this. She grabbed Nathaniel's wrist for the third time that morning, dragged him to the back of the class, pushed him into his seat, and sat down next to him. One death stare later, the entire class was silent.

An akuma. Of course. And amazingly enough, it wasn't after Chloe. It was, however, after Mr. Damocles, so the students were in danger nonetheless. Nathaniel didn't stay to find out who it was or what they wanted, and neither did Chloe. Well, not like she had a choice. The tomato-haired boy picked her up again and started running. Where? To the art closet.

No one knew about the art closet. Not even the art teacher. Not even the principal. In fact, Nathaniel had absolutely no idea how he, of all people, did, but he was going to use it to his advantage. He pulled the key to the room from out of his back pocket and unlocked the door, pushing Chloe inside and then going in himself. He locked the door and then pulled out his phone and turned on the flashlight.

"Where are we?" Chloe asked, brushing dust off of her clothing.

"The art closet. The key was lost years ago and they made an announcement, remember? I found the key, obviously, but just didn't tell them. I'm pretty sure everyone's forgotten about this place, so I basically just have a hideout in school that no one knows about. Maybe I'll give the key to some unassuming freshman when we graduate."

He sat down and leaned against a wall, and she joined him a moment later. "So do we just wait here until it's safe again?"

"Yeah."

They sat in silence. Nathaniel was used to not talking, from his years of introvertedness, but Chloe was clearly uncomfortable. "Um…" Chloe wasn't an expert at making conversation, and when she was, the conversation was mostly insults and gossip. So that wasn't an option. The only thing was… but it was such a stupid game. She'd played it when she was thirteen, but she wasn't thirteen anymore. She was seventeen. Whatever. "Wanna play Truth or Dare?"

"Huh?" Figures. Of course he wouldn't know what it was. She explained it, and then made him go first, because she was terrible at coming up with things. "Truth or Dare?"

"Truth." She always picked truth. Just because she was in a secret art closet with her crush while an akuma wreaked havoc on the rest of the school outside didn't change that.

Nathaniel thought for a minute. "Why didn't you want me to know it was you who got me the sketchbooks?"

Chloe paused. The real reason was that she didn't want him to know she liked him, and telling him that was exactly the opposite of her initial goal. "Well, I'm normally not very nice. I didn't want anyone to think I was going to start all of a sudden, so, yeah." It wasn't completely true, but it was true enough for a game of "Truth or Dare?"

"Truth."

"Did you like the sketchbooks?" It was lame, but it was all she could come up with. "Sorry, I'm really bad at this game."

He chuckled quietly. "No no, it's fine. I love them. I'm saving the really fancy one, but the other one is practically already full of drawings. The first one is of you." The thought that someone actually cared made her eyes water, but before she could start sobbing again he asked, "Truth or Dare?"

Maybe being in a secret art closet with her crush while an akuma wreaked havoc on the rest of the school outside did change things. "Dare."

Chloe was in no way prepared for what came out of Nathaniel's mouth. "I dare you to kiss me."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I dare you to kiss me," he said again simply. Oh God. Why did she pick dare? How could she have been so stupid? She hadn't thought about it at all, and even if she had, she would have assumed that Nathaniel wouldn't have the guts to ask such a forward question. Apparently he did.

But she did want to kiss him, didn't she? But it wasn't that simple. As soon as she did, she would have to deal with the consequences, and she wasn't really in the mood to deal with that sort of thing, as she also had a bunch of other things to deal with, like the fact that she had accidentally slept over at Nathaniel's house _and_ seen his incredible abs over the course of 24 hours. No one knew but him, but that wouldn't be the case for long if she didn't give Sabrina that skirt by the end of the day. And her father would also wonder why, if she'd been planning to stay the night with her friend, hadn't she brought a bag with her? In fact, she hardly went to Sabrina's at all since-

She was thinking too much. _Screw it,_ she thought to herself, then grabbed his shirt and pulled his lips to hers.

When Nathaniel dared her to kiss him, he didn't think she would actually do it. After all, she didn't like him, did she? But as he cupped her face with one hand and put the other on her waist, he thought, _Maybe she does._

"Chloe?" Sabrina's voice came from down the hall. Chloe pulled away slightly, her eyes full of worry that someone would find them, because really, no one _wants_ to be found in an abandoned art closet making out with their crush.

"She won't find us here, the door's locked," he assured her, then pulled her waist closer to his and kissed her again. She melted.

Chloe couldn't pass up another ride on Nathaniel's motorcycle. In fact, she almost wanted to buy one herself and get a license. Maybe another day. For now, she was content holding Nathaniel's hand and walking out of school. Sabrina, when she saw them, asked, "Are you two dating or something?"

The honey-blonde glanced at the other half of the 'you two' in a questioning look. He squeezed her hand in conformation. So she smiled at her former slave, who she had decided to fire, out of kindness, and said, "Yes."


End file.
